FF 3.6+ Applets and the right JDK

[Aryeh Friedman]

I currently use java/diablo-jdk-1.6.0.07.02_9,
www/linux-f10-flashplugin-10.1r53 and www/firefox-3.5.11,1 for both
personal and professional browsing on 8.1-STABLE... except for the
occasional npviewer hiccup it seems to work fine... I want to upgrade
to the latest JDK, flash and firefox possible... note since I do
applet development (my main jdk for doing the actual compiling is
1.6u21 on a cloud Gentoo server)... I want to update both the local
and server jdk's but the server side has given us problems with
generics in some rare cases (we have some very complex type
parameterizations in one of our core libs)... what do people recommend
interms of far I can upgrade stuff (I would preffer openjdk 1.6,
latest ff and latest flash if possible)